Unfortunately, technical problems are common with modern computer games and hardware. As game technology pushes the boundaries of what is possible on a PC, and PC component manufacturers push their boundaries of performance and "cheapness", such problems are bound to happen. Add a plethora of different network and operating system environments, miscellaneous other programs running at the same time and a whole host of nefarious adware, spyware and general malware programs such as viruses, trojans and worms and it's a wonder anything works at all.
Sadly, games manufactures tend to be optimistic with regards to running conditions, and their support for unexpected situations is usually non-existent. Technical support is usually given primarily by other members of the community who either have technical experience or who have been through the same painful problems that others are experiencing.
This page is an attempt to provide some useful information that my help to solve any technical difficulties that you may have, good luck.
First thing we need to do is eliminate the basic problems.
Is your hardware compatible?
Check on the minimum hardware requirements against what you have. Meeting most of the requirements is not good enough, you have to meet all of them. Also remember that the minimum requirements are just that, minimum. System performance may not be very satisfactory at all, this just means that the game will run in it's most basic configuration. It's often a good guide to ensure you have double or even tripple the minimum requirements for smooth operation.
Update your drivers
Windows provides games with a virtual machine. This enables a game developer to write game programs for this one standard virtual piece of hardware. Windows relies on programs called drivers to translate it's virtual machine into the specific commands to drive your specific hardware. The device driver is written by the hardware manufacturer and shipped with it. Microsoft also provide a set of drivers for most common manufacturers. Unfortunately, the Microsoft drivers tend to be safe and featureless to provide basic support, and the manufacturers are hardware specialists, not software, so the drivers released with hardware are usually quite rough and buggy,
Fortunately, most manufacturers realise that the easiest way to provide technical support for their equipment is to make new versions of the drivers available freely on their websites. Bugs and other issues in the original drivers can easily be fixed later and distributed to all who need them. Simply find out the manufacturer and model number of any hardware that you have and log on to the relevant site to get the latest drivers.
One mistake many people make is that they get the latest video driver but this does not fix their problem. You have to keep all your drivers up to date. This includes sound cards, Hard disk, AGP, USB controllers (motherboard drivers), network and modem drivers and any other hardware that you may use such as mice and specialist game controllers.
Clean your system
The Internet is a dangerous place, once the realm of a few philanthropic enthusiasts, geeks and switched on boffins, it is now more the home of wholesale scum bags, spammers, hackers, crackers, peadophiles, pornographers and every form of criminal and twisted psycho you can possibly imagine. And they all want to control YOUR PC. They have a vast array of technical ans social tricks to force their evil upon your machine, often without you even knowing about it. Do you really know what is running on your PC as you read this?
Just as there are many evil programs trying to corrupt the purpose of your PC, thankfully there are many programs that are designed to thwart their efforts, many of them free. Most people know about anti-virus programs but there are many nasties that these do not catch. Checkout our utilities page for links to some of these spyware and ad removal programs. Get into the habit of running these on a regular basis to keep your machine relatively clean and trouble free.
Configure your system
Switch on your firewall! If you are connected to the internet, one thing you should do before you even connect is configure a firewall. If you are on Windows XP then you already have a firewall built in, but you have to turn it on. Simply right-click on the network connection and select properties, then go to the advanced tab and tick the box that says "Protect my computer..." in the Internet Connection Firewall section. If you don't have XP then you should obtain a firewall product, there are free ones around for personal use. However, many of these can cause problems for games if not properly configured so ensure you read up on how to use the particular firewall you install. See this article: Required Network Ports for a Multi-player Rise of Nations Game
Defrag your disk on a regular basis and delete temporary and other unused files. Windows likes to have a tidy disk, by defragmenting your file system on a regular basis and deleting any unwanted files you can solve a lot of problems, not just with games but for all programs. To deframent your disk, load windows explorer and right-click on your drives, select properties. Click on the tools tab and you will see defragmentation.
Look after virtual memory. As well as physical RAM, windows also uses disk space to add to it's system memory resources. With a well defragmented system and plenty of disk space, you would normally never need to alter virtual memory. But if you think you may have a problem in this area then use this guide. Your minimum page file size should be twice the amount of physical RAM you have, set your maximum size as much as you can up to 4,192 megabytes. NEVER disable the page file. If you are lucky enough to have a second physical hard disk drive then you can locate your page file on the drive that is not holding your Windows folder for better performance. Even if you only have one disk, you may like to create a separate 4Gb partition purely for use of the page file to ensure it never gets fragmented. To alter your page file/virtual memory settings go to control panel, then system (classic view). Click on the Advanced tab then click the performance button. Now select the advanced tab and you will see the option to change your virtual memory settings.
Configure your game
Make sure that you are running the latest game patch, Rise of Nations has a built in auto-patch feature, all you have to do is connect to gamespy multi-play from inside RoN and the latest patch should be installed. You can also download a stand alone patch from Big Huge Games
Be realistic with the in-game options that you enable. RoN auto configures what it thinks your system can handle, if you adjust detail levels above this then you may experience problems. Some problems that are encountered are not with the actual game itself but with the pre-game and ingame full motion videos. These may be caused by problems with Windows Media Player, or video playback problems associated with other players that you may have installed. You can switch these features off by changing lines in your C:\Documents and Settings\(YourProfileName)\Application Data\Microsoft Games\Rise Of Nations\rise2.ini file. Use notepad and change or add lines so that they read
SkipIntroMovies=1
ForceLowCPUBackgroundVid=1
dxdiag
Many problems you may experience have nothing to do with the game it'self but instead are the fault of the Windows Virtual Machine. One vital component of that machine for games is the DirectX. dxdiag is a program that comes with DirectX that allows you to diagnose any problems with it's setup. From your start menu, select Run... and enter dxdiag. This program will perform various tests on your system and report any problems. See if this gives you any insight. dxdiag will also allow you to save any technical information that may be of great use to any technically minded person that could help you.
Isolate the problem
Turn things off. Don't assume anything, your problem could be the cause of any failing component. Try to isolate the cause of the problem by switching things off. Does the problem go away if you play with sound disabled? Lower graphics resolutions. Can you play single player? If it's a multi-player problem can you play multi-player but with just one human player? Try turning your firewall off, turn anti-virus off.
Asking for help
The first place you should seek help is the game manufacturer. For Rise of Nations this is support@bighugegames.com. You can also ask for help on various game community forums, see the game links page on this site for a list of community sites. Read the FAQs, articles and sticky posts on these forums to see if your problem is addressed there. If not then post your query/problem on some of the community forums. Always look for the relevent forum to post in, there will usually be technical support forum.
When you ask for help try to give as much detail as possible. Describe the problem you are having, including the steps you take to get to that problem. State what you have already tried and ruled out (save a lot of time) and give as much detailed information about your system as possible, what cpu do you have, graphics and sound card, version of Windows, various driver versions. But don't post up the output of dxdiag unless someone asks for it.
See the subpage below for a list of Microsoft support articles